An old, minor, criminal record does tend to tell you quite a bit about a person

[BoldAdventurer]

Until recently I would have said that once a person's done their time, maybe learned from their mistakes and moved on it's time to let them put it behind them. I'm not talking about Ched Evans but much less serious crimes.

However, in my current job I get to see staff's DBS checks (and old CRB checks). We employ a lot of people on not much more than minimum wage and there are a handful who have spent convictions. One is for ABH when she was a teenager and there are a number of benefit frauds. These are all people who have been working for the company for a number of years and at the time of thier appointment, it was considered that their past wasn't relevant to their ability to do the job and that if you pay badly you take what you can get .

Anyway, these few staff are more trouble than the rest put together. They are the ones who often make mistakes on their timesheets, but strangely always in their favour, the ones who have loads of one day absences, the ones who do the bare minimum when they are in work, the ones who stir up trouble when unpopular changes are made etc.

So, AIBU, to think that whilst these convictions are very old and it's reasonable to expect that they could be forgotten, they do in fact give quite a good indication of the person's character?

It's common sense. Also some of those people will have come from very difficult family homes which is bound to have an effect on their later life.
I know someone who deliberately hires young offenders to give them a second chance. Some are great. One was recently arrested for stabbing someone (not at work). You are bound to get more trouble if you hire people like this. It is one reason some employers like recommendations for new people to hire from existing employees which is a fascinating topic for all kinds of reasons. They will even pay the employee part of the recruitment agency fee they might otherwise have had to pay.

Fair enough, PiperRose - that may be good advice pragmatically speaking, then. I was probably being a bit defensive on OP's behalf because I think it's quite a reasonable issue to want to discuss at a theoretical level.